


the dice are loaded; you'll never miss

by eudaimon



Series: Outlaw Bikers [1]
Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-31
Updated: 2013-01-31
Packaged: 2017-11-27 17:44:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/664692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaimon/pseuds/eudaimon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nate Fick is the Captain of the Bravo Two Motorcyle Club; his entire life has been linked to it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the dice are loaded; you'll never miss

_And I will never go home again..._

 

 _1984_ :  
Nate is five years old when his mother dies. It’s nobody’s fault or, at least, that’s what he’s told. _Sometimes, God just takes the good ones first_. Later, Nate will wonder quite what his dad meant by that but he’s five years old and all he knows is that there will be no stories from his mother and that somebody else will wash his hair.

Which is probably the part that he finds most difficult to understand.  
And it will always be those little things that he misses most.

On his tiptoes, he looks down at her in her coffin. He reaches out and smoothes the flowered pattern of her dress. She looks beautiful, really beautiful, but she also doesn’t look anything like his mom at all.

She’s another lady. He knows nothing about her.  
His dad behind him, one hand on his shoulder. He says something that Nate doesn’t quite catch.  
It sounds really like _sorry_.

*  
 _1995_ :  
His first bike is nothing to write home about but he loves it because it’s _his_. His dad’s gone more than he’s home so it’s Godfather and Gunny who show him how to strip an engine, how to clean it carefully and put it back together again. He rides like an idiot, at first (later, it will never surprise him to learn that teenage brains don’t understand risk in the same way that adults do).

Riding his bike is the first time that he breaks the law. He gets his first scars.  
It’s startling to realise how little he gives a shit.

*  
 _1998_ :  
His life changes when he’s eighteen. He gets a better bike. His father puts a bullet in his brain and he inherits leadership of the Chapter. He doesn’t go to college. He still reads a lot.

During the day, the club-house is dim and quiet. Nate spends a lot of time alone, reading books, working on his bike. He knows what’s going on, knows the deals that get done, but he also knows that his mom was one of the good ones and that she would have wanted to believe that he was good too, so he stays at home and he lets Manimal run hookers and he lets Ray sell weed. Poke keeps everyone in check.

He kneels side by side with Poke and, slowly but surely, he learns to be a better mechanic.  
So it’s not a year where nothing changes.

But maybe nothing changes as much as he wants it to. And he doesn’t know what to do with that.

At night, the Prospects tend bar and the Jukebox spews shitty soft rock. Nate puts his back to the corner and drinks beers. He smokes and idly watches Poke and his old lady dancing, watches Ray playing cards and then there’s a girl (because there’s always a girl), swaying in closer and pressing her body against his, her skirt so short that it’s only just covering her ass. Nate reaches around, rests his beer-bottle against her and lets his eyes half close at the sensation of her body pressed against his. Sometimes he fucks them, sometimes he doesn’t. This one’s got big tits and fire-engine red hair. She kisses his neck and the lights dance between his eyelashes. When he opens his eyes, one of the Prospects, the newest one, the one with the short blond hair and the blue eyes, the broad shoulders that remind Nate of the time when he was a teenager, fucked up and sad and drunk enough to make out with his best friend in a rumpled single bed and act like it was comfort.

And they were awkward for weeks after that. Neither of them really comforted.

His hand on her ass and his fingers brush against bare skin, the lace-elastic edge of her panties. The prospect’s still watching him. 

Brad.  
Nate thinks his name is Brad.

Bon Jovi’s on the Jukebox. The girl takes him by both hands and draws him away from the wall, draws him in closer to her again. Nate Fick is eighteen years old; both of his parents are dead and he’s the king of all he surveys. Some days, he doesn’t know whether he’s happy or sad or fucked or everything at once. He bends his head and grazes a kiss against the girl’s temple, breathes in the heavy, artificial scent of her skin. She’s wearing drug-store perfume. She takes his face in both hands and kisses him, nudging his mouth open and pressing forward with her tongue.

Brad’s gone when he pulls back to breathe. He’s not sure why he notices.

*  
He lies awake beside her and wonders if he’s ever seen her in porn.  
Maybe. Before she dyed her hair.

 _2003_ :  
They kid themselves that the wars they fight are meaningful. Nate knows only the barest workings of what they do; he leaves it mostly to Poke and Manimal. He prefers to get his hands dirty in different ways. The old camper van has seen better days and, probably, nothing that he does to the engine will make any difference, but he takes it apart, anyway. He strips it down to nothing. Reminds himself of Rudy chanting while he paints. He loses himself in it for a while.

He peels his shirt over his head.  
The sleeve on his left arm is nearly done; Nate firmly believes that his ink is a record of his history. On his skin, there’s a map of where he’s been. He’s got an appointment to get the last chunk filled in, a flare of colour and flame close to his wrist. Between his shoulderblades, a scatter of stars and a neat line of script. He read it in a book about Ulysses S. Grant; “find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can…”

 _And keep moving on._  
Four words to live by.

Fingers graze against the bare skin of his back. Brad’s standing there, casting a strange, straight shadow and, for a moment, on his knees, Nate’s just looking up at him. For a long time, it’s felt like they’re teetering on the edge of something. At the end of long nights, they end up leaned together in the corner of the bar, both of them drunk, both of them boneless, hands that want but lack direction. Nate cradles the back of Brad’s skull with slightly trembling fingers. Brad’s fists come to rest against Nate’s bare hipbones.

“You need a hand with him, Cap?” asks Ray, hair pushed back from his forehead, cigarette between his lips and the new bird all but singing on his bicep.

Nate just shakes his head. They’re fine, and they stay leaning together like cards.

Nate’s room is closer to the bar than Brad’s, so he manhandles them both there. They manage to fumble out of boots and cuts and then they collapse next to each other on the unmade bed.

At some point in the night, Brad’s broad hand comes to rest on Nate’s belly.  
He doesn’t move it away.


End file.
